Hot Tub Time Machine: A Comedy Full of Soul
Feel like repealing everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks? The new movie Hot Tub Time Machine takes that idea and runs with it. What if we repealed the last couple of decades? What if Reagan was still president, girls with massively teased hair wore color-block outfits, and Spandau Ballet was the makeout music of choice?
Hot Tub isn’t the funniest movie since The Hangover — it’s funnier. It makes comedy stars out of career character actors Rob Corddry (The Heartbreak Kid) and Craig Robinson (The Office). It even makes John Cusack likable, mainly because, in giving him the role of Adam, a broken-down middle-aged loser whose girlfriend dumps him and takes their TV with her, it scuffs him up a little.
Robinson plays Nick, another nobody — he plays a guy who works with dogs, one of whom features in the first of the movie’s several sensationally funny gross-out gags — who once wanted to be a musician. Nick and Adam’s friend Lou, aka “The Violator” (an outstanding Corddry) is the biggest loser of the three, attempting suicide while listening to Motley Crue in his car.
Together with Adam’s nerdy 20-something nephew (Clark Duke), the guys try to pull themselves together with a visit to the ski resort where, in the mid-80s, they spent some of the happiest weekends of their lives. “We were young, we had momentum, we were winning,” says Cusack, regretfully. Too bad now the place smells like cats and its only bellhop (Crispin Glover) is a one-armed psychotic. How exactly he lost that arm is the source of the best running gag in a movie that’s full of them.
Glover’s presence – he’s also in theaters with Alice in Wonderland, though he doesn’t do much with that part — is one of many shout-outs to Back to the Future, whose plot clearly inspired this movie. After the four guys get in a hot tub … well, you can figure out what happens. Robinson gets to deliver the Snakes on a Plane-caliber title line, and when the friends notice that everyone in the ski resort is dressed strangely, that MTV is still playing videos, and Ronald Reagan is the undisputed leader of the free world, Nick turns to one fellow skier to ask one simple question that will determine whether they’ve really gone back in time: “What color is Michael Jackson?”
You’re right, it sounds just like “Snakes On A Plane.” A low-budget movie with some (suspicious) internet buzz. I’m not old enough to get all those hilarious eighties references, and my kids are really excited about “How To Train Your Dragon.”
“What really makes the movie a classic is the absurd situations and the raunchy dialogue, a nonstop stream of insults and dirty jokes.”
That makes it a classic? Or makes it just like a lot of the other Hollywood crap, provided by lazy writers that take good material and drag it through the gutter. I’ll pass.
But thanks for the review, John. You have at least saved me the time of reading any of your reviews in the future.
Yes, John, thanks for the review. Finally a Hope/Crosby “road” or Abbot&Costello type movie which entertains, rather than anti-American screeds from Hollywood’s high school dropouts.
Thanks.
I did something yesterday I haven’t done in years, unless it was political commentary, The Discovery Channel or sports. I watched TV – old TV; the Beverly Hillbillies to be more specific. And it was fun. It was funny. It lasted only 30 minutes. But it wasn’t crude, it needed no sexual innuendo or bodily fluids to make wit, it had nothing vile.
I’m no prude. I’ve heard it all and seen it all. But I am tired of “absurd situations and the raunchy dialogue, a nonstop stream of insults and dirty jokes.”
I’ll pass on the movie and dream again of a more clever and better day.
Thanks. Now I have to put on a thin leather tie, Nike tennis shoes and find some cassette tapes for my Walkman.
Just Another Stupid Movie.
You guys need to find someone who has some taste and calls out leftists in Hollywierd instead of celebrating indecency
Tex,
The cable was out last night, so I flipped over to the antenna. Because of the limited choices, I was left with the Patty Duke Show. Wholesome and still hilarious. Because of a computer error during an IQ test, Paul Lynde thought Patty was a genius and he told her family that her mind shouldn’t be wasted on chores and other menial tasks. The family bought into what he was saying, so when they sent her brother to get her and he came back, he said with all sincerity, “She was in there doing dishes. It broke my heart!”
Hey, I LOLed.
I wouldn’t spend a dime to see John Cusack in anything. I used to like him when he was younger and appeared in coming-of-age movies, but he has become so radical and left wing, I can’t stomach any movie/TV show in which he appears. He’s entitled to his opinions, but as a celebrity, I would prefer he kept them to himself and his circle of friends & family. And because he makes his views known to the public like me, I choose not to pay to see his movies. I realize that won’t make a dent in his bank account, but I refuse to spend money on what is mostly rehashed drivel coming out of Hollywood these days.
I’ve always liked John Cusack (as an actor, not as a typical Hollywood lib) and will see him in just about anything. My wife and I also loved “The Hangover.” And after the events of last Sunday, I for one needed some laughs. So this seemed to be a natural for us. We went Friday with 6 friends. It was unanimous among the group members: this is a terrible, terrible movie. Not a likable character among all of them, least of all Cusack’s. Don’t waste your dollars IMO.